Nvidia officially launches GTX 650 Ti Boost

Nvidia has officially launched its newest mid-range graphics card in order to counter the recently launched AMD Radeon HD 7790.

The GTX 650 Ti Boost is based on the same GK106 Kepler GPU as the GTX 650 Ti and the GTX 660, the new card features 768 CUDA cores, 64 texture units 24 ROPs, works at 980MHz base and 1033MHz boost clock and will be available with either 1 or 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz and paired up wtih a 192-bit memory interface.

By launching two versions with 1GB or 2GB of memory, Nvidia manages to battle both the HD 7790 1GB graphics card in the US $149 range as well as the Radeon HD 7850 2GB in the US $169 price range. Few days earlier, or to be precise on Friday, when we wrote about the GTX 650 Ti Boost, Nvidia planed, or at least told its partners, that the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB will go after the HD 7850 and thus should be priced accordingly at around US $189, but a few days later, Nvidia decided to drop the price down to US $169 in order to better cope with AMD's offering. These prices make the GTX 650 Ti Boost 1/2GB quite a decent match for AMD's offerings on both fronts, but we'll get to details a bit later.

Performance and specification wise, the GTX 650 Ti Boost has a lot more to do with the GTX 660 rather than the GTX 650 Ti. The GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB on average, depending on the game and the benchmark, certainly breathes down the HD 7850 2GB neck and is even slightly faster in some if not most scenarios. Unfortunately, Nvidia did a clever thing and most if not all sites are doing the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB review and compare it to the HD 7790 which honestly does not sound fair as we are not talking about the same price range.

Judging by the slides that we saw earlier, Nvidia certainly wanted to go after the HD 7850 and the HD 7790 now simply sounds like collateral damage. Unfortunately, prices go up and down and we are sure that AMD has at least some room to adjust their pricing and offer great value with those bundled games.

Currently, as far as we can see, the HD 7850 2GB sells for around US $180 with various rebates at Newegg.com which makes it about US $10 more expensive than the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB. The HD 7790 1GB should be selling for US $149.99 which is pretty much what Nvidia wants for the GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB graphics card.

In Europe, the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB should go for €149 for the 1GB and €169 for the 2GB version. A quick check of our favorite EU price search engine reveals that you can actually buy the HD 7850 2GB graphics card for about the same amount of money and, of course, the HD 7790 1GB also is pretty much in line with the GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB €149.

We have yet to see a GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB review but judging from these first GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB reviews, AMD's HD 7790 will certainly be in trouble and we are quite sure that they will justify it with the Never Settle Reloaded bundle that adds Bioshock Infinite game coupon. Same thing can be applied to the HD 7850 and the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB, as although it does come on top, performance wise (in some if not all situations), AMD can easily say that their card has more value thanks to the bundle, which in this case adds both the Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider games.